Aperture vs. Lightroom – best comparisons
Like many other readers of this blog I’ve been look for a good head to head comparison of Apple’s Aperture vs. Adobe’s Lightroom. I make the comparison myself but I have neither the time nor a Mac of my own. So the notes on this page merely represent what I’ve learned from others.
Hands down the best work is coming from a pair of O’Reilly Digital Media Bloggers: Micah Walter and Michael Clark. Micah is an Aperture user trying Lightroom for 10 days, Michael is a Lightroom user trying Aperture. Between them they’re starting to paint a very interesting comparison. BTW Spend the time to read the comments they add alot of extra information.
from Micah:
- Special Event: Aperture Vs. Lightroom
- Aperture Vs. Lightroom: Let the Games Begin
- Aperture Vs. Lightroom: Day 1 – Lightroom’s Library Module
- Aperture Vs. Lightroom: Day 2 – The Rainbow Filter? Note in the main text Micah misses the Virtual Copies functionality. Michael Green and Eric both provide corrections.
- Aperture Vs. Lightroom: Day 3 – The Develop Module "Lightroom’s Develop module, in a nutshell, is awesome!"
- Aperture Vs. Lightroom: Day 4 – The World in Black and White
- Aperture Vs. Lightroom: Day 5 – Ready for the Web Micah
complains that you can’t save the web galleries you create – however
the commenters that these settings are saved with the collection.
However I’m not sure if that was quite what Micah was looking for. So
the juries out on this one. - Lightroom Vs. Aperture: Day 6 – Exporting Images
- Aperture Vs. Lightroom: Day 7 – River Rotations
- Aperture vs Lightroom – An O’Reilly "Inside Aperture" Wrap up
from Michael:
- Lightroom vs. Aperture: Versions and Stacking After playing with stacking in both Lightroom and Aperture, I have to say that it is much better done in Aperture…
- Lightroom vs. Aperture: Loupe Views Compared Interesting Michael prefers Lightroom’s zoom
- Lightroom vs. Aperture: Synching Adjustments
- Lightroom vs. Aperture: The Results
Aperture Pros:
- Browser display more metadata than Lightroom
- You
can make adjustments to your images at anytime – without having to
switch to the Develop module (via the Heads up Display). Several people
(David Medina among them) make final changes when view the images in
the contact sheet. - Light table
- Can stack with a collection (collections are just virtual groupings of pictures). This seems like a pretty minor limitation. I would like to know how this would be really useful.
- Better color profile support
- Support dual screens
- Black, Gray and White point settings.
Lightroom pros:
- Doesn’t require a new Mac ($$$$)
- Can import all of my existing tagging information from Photoshop Elements (yes I’ve been slumming it for the past few years).
- Can assign standard metadata to every image on import
- Presets – a bunch come stock and you can find many more on the web.
- Better spot removal, cloning and healing tool.
- Faster, Faster, Faster
- Works well with limited real estate (many users comment that Aperture really wants a 30 inch display or two monitors).
- Auto-Sync has fewer steps and so is a bit faster than Lift and Stamp to use.
Cool discoveries:
- Jeffery’s Lightroom Metadata-Viewer Preset Builder
- A user’s comparison (I can’t find the name from the blog)
- Ars Technica review of Lightroom
- Digital Freak also reviews both Caveat Emptor – he appears to have missed several important features in Aperture. Although these mistakes are corrected in the comments I wonder what else he missed.
Aperture
seems to have important items in its favour: Light table and the
ability to adjust the image anywhere (not just develop). However I’m
leaning towards Lightroom since I’m not tied to using a Mac forever,
speed and better healing tools.
Which app will you use? Have I missed any good comparisons?
If you enjoyed this post, subscribe now to get free updates.
Wow – to all of Mike’s readers who’ve been flooding in – its great to have you here. Several people have asked for a comparison of Aperture and Lightroom to LightZone: details. Also of interest: Lightroom isn’t a reaction to Aperture.
Related posts:
Did you love this post?
Then please share it!
March 1, 2007 at 12:44 pm | louis
application performance is very important for every users when you are dealing with hundred or thousand of raw photos.
i have a 24 inch imac with 2G RAM. when i test drive from aperture to lightroom, i will not open aperture again as the speed of lightroom is very good on my imac. it’s good if lightroom have…
- one touch backup like vault
- aperture kind of ‘loupe’
also, i found that the special $199 offer is applicable to US/Canada/Mexica users. i live in hong kong and i can’t order it from web. can my friend order it from US and give me the code for registration? this save me $100
please advise
March 1, 2007 at 2:39 pm | Mark Levison
Performance, Performance, Performance – if the app doesn’t perform its not going to very useful to you.
Do you really think you need the loupe? have you read Michael Clark’s comments on loupe vs. zoom? What does backup vault give you – one click backup? Aren’t there lots of good Mac backup programs out there?
I really don’t get why Adobe didn’t make the special offer world wide. Weird. Obviously you can do anything you want in terms of getting your friend to download it for you. Just don’t tell Adobe I said so.
March 12, 2007 at 2:44 pm | Steve
Aperture does not require a 30″ display, nor does it prefer one. I think the person (Ars reviewer?) that made that comment didn’t know you could customize you work area, eg close whatever palettes you like. I close them all and use the HUDs. Aperture is very flexible in regards to both work layout and flow.
May 8, 2007 at 11:11 pm | Aaron Pressman
I tried both for 30 days and I’m not a pro but I much preferred Lightroom. I just posted a review on my blog today:
http://gravitationalpull.net/wp/?p=161
June 6, 2007 at 12:52 pm | daniel
I’ve used Aperture for a while now and can say I prefer Aperture’s import functionality and the ability to have only the adjustment panes that you need visible and floating (and the ability to customize the available panes). It’s runs quite well on my MacBook Pro Core Duo (2GB ram), and the addition of my 22″ LCD made editing/ranking photos at almost full resolution a dream. The one lacking feature of Aperture is the printing support – it’s not very deep, and can be frustrating to first time users. Maybe that will be addressed in future versions…
I’ll be posting tips and tricks on my blog as I get time to write them :)
http://www.danielroy.com/blog
June 6, 2007 at 6:07 pm | julian
I’ve used Aperture and Lightroom extensively. As a stock photographer who comes back from a shoot with 5000 images to edit and prepare for my stock agency, Lightroom kills Aperture in two key areas: keywording and dust spotting. Aperture supports keyword hierachies, BUT it doesn’t include the keywords higher up in the hierarchy when you export the image!! So you have to type them all in anyway. And the clone tool for removing dust spots is SO much quicker to use in Lightroom. It’s a shame as Aperture has some cool features as noted above, but for getting images ready to ship quickly, Lightroom is the one to have.
Travel Photographer of the Year
http://www.adventurephotographer.net
November 17, 2008 at 12:25 am | dinesh
Detailed overview of the strengths and weaknesses of both apps, by Rick LePage. This sort of expansive comparison is exactly the sort of thing Macworld does best. In the old days, Macworld published similar comparisons for rivalries like FreeHand/Illustrator and QuarkXPress/PageMaker whenever there were major updates.
———————-
Dinesh
http://www.legalx.net